Tuesday, December 09, 2014

Paul Fromm and the Morality of the Movement

October was a big month for Paul Fromm. He was running for mayor of Mississauga in an election which, if it can be believed, he actually did worse than in his previous effort. Earlier in the month he was in Budapest to attend and speak at a conference organized by the racist National Policy Institute, though that event didn't exactly go off without a hitch.

And just after the election at the end of the month, Paulie was once again an honored guest and speaker at Thomas Robb's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan annual European American Heritage Festival, organized both by Robb and his daughter Rachel Pendergraft, which purports to be a family friendly affair:

Now when we alluded to this apparent leak of photographs, one of the individuals who commented on the article made the following statement:IMO this isn't relevant to ARC's mission. Paul Fromm is a fucking Nazi. His marital problems I could care less about.

We would be hard pressed to disagree with that statement, which is why we didn't post the images on the blog here and why we really haven't referred to them since. However, over the last couple of months we decided that they do have relevance.
Paulie has made a career in the movement attacking minorities and he has frequently stated that the cultural (and often sexual) practices of certain minorities are deviant, though he often has used more salacious language. He further suggests that if those minorities can not conform to what he views as "Canadian" standards of decency and morality, then they are not suited to be citizens. Of course the implication of a decent (i.e. white European) cultural norm is exemplified in this screen shot:

You're right Patricia. Hypocrisy is everywhere.

Patricia is the woman in the now infamous photographs with Paulie who himself is dressed very much like the guy in the right photo above, though Paulie isn't wearing a jaunty hat, nor can he rock leather thigh-high heel boots like the guy in the above photo can. Come to think of it, considering the amount of uncovered skin, the guy in the photo above is dressed significantly more modestly than Paulie is in his photos.

Let us be clear that we truly don't care what Paulie's sexual proclivities are, though if we are being honest it isn't a preoccupation of ours for reasons that our readers can well imagine. Our issue is that he is a horrible hypocrite in that he condemns others for behavior that he appears to engage in himself.

Like, oh, we don't know.... claiming to support the "traditional" (ie. white European) value of fidelity in marriage while cheating on your wife:

In some ways though this is a story less about Paulie than it is the complicity of the rest of the movement in covering up for their leaders.

We came to the conclusion quickly that we were not the only ones to receive the email that disseminated the photos. But it wasn't just anti-racists and anti-racist organizations that appear to have received them. We'll never know the numbers, but it seems that a significant number of boneheads also received the email. However one wouldn't know this if one were only to go by online buzz. The only public announcement on an online hate site was found on Stormfront which resulted in no responses and which suggested the photos had been photoshopped by someone in the ARA:

There were no similar posts made on the subject on any of the other prominent hate sites to our knowledge. Everything seemed to be pretty quiet and no one made a fuss.

Well, that isn't entirely accurate.

Earlier we mentioned that Fromm was to attend the European American Heritage Conference organized by KKK leader Tom Robb and his daughter Rachel Pendergraft. In addition to their own website, a Facebook group was created to promote the event.

On that Facebook group, someone posted this:

One of the two photos had been posted and was available for at least 11 hours before it was quietly removed by the administrators of the group. It did result in a reaction for the few who saw it (it deso't appear the group was very active):

That it was eventually taken down without any comment wasn't a surprise, but there actually is more to this story.

We don't know how many others responded to the initial email, but the members of ARC on active duty (this writer had taken a bit of a sabbatical) replied to ask about the origin of the photos. During our conversation, two things were clear:

1. The person who sent the photos was NOT a fan of us or any other anti-racist organization, however,

2. Whomever it was who sent the photos, that person was very angry.

While we didn't get too much information out of the person who sent the emails, and some of the information we promised not to divulge, we did receive something that was of interest. We know that at least two others replied to the email. One of those individuals was Kevin Goudreau who seemed to enjoy what he saw:

The other message, longer and more significant, came from Rachel Pendergraft who along with her father would host Paulie at their conference at the end of the month. In Pendergraft's message, she suggests that while she doesn't condone the behavior, she does appear to rationalize it. She further states that what Paulie was doing was not a case of adultery:

The ARC Collective

Mission Statement

A group of diverse but like-minded individuals, the members of ARC have come together in their common desire to fight hatred, bigotry, intolerance and violence because of the harm these antisocial behaviors cause to our society. In that effort, we will not use or sanction the use of illegal actions (such as violence or intimidation) in pursuit of our desired aims and if we learn of anyone who does use these unethical methods we will report those individuals to the authorities. Instead, we will use the guarantees found in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that ensure freedom of legal speech and expression.

For Those Who Wish To Contact Us

Our contact email is arc(dot)collective200(at)gmail(dot)com for anyone interested in getting in touch with us.